


Happy Announcement?

by lalaietha



Series: Ten Thousand Things [17]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-06
Updated: 2011-04-06
Packaged: 2017-10-17 16:41:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/lalaietha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The nicest thing about having Toph Bei Fong for a visit was always knowing who was coming quite a few minutes before they arrived at the door. At least, as long as she knew their walk, but Toph knew the rhythm of quite a few people's steps, and was quite familiar with most of the important ones. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Announcement?

The nicest thing about having Toph Bei Fong for a visit was always knowing who was coming quite a few minutes before they arrived at the door. At least, as long as she knew their walk, but Toph knew the rhythm of quite a few people's steps, and was quite familiar with most of the important ones.

She was frowning at their specially made pai sho board when she suddenly sat straight up, scowled and said, "Damn," and sat back and _sighed_ , before digging in her pocket for a few coins (which came up with the ground remains of a few fire-flakes, as well). "You win," she said, in a resigned sort of way.

It was enough to tell him that Zuko was at the door before his nephew stepped in out of the pouring rain.

There was a sort of a pleasant agreement, with the citizens of Ba Sing Sei, about Iroh's nephew: they pretended the Fire Lord didn't occasionally dress in green, order away all his bodyguards and sneak out to the Jasmine Dragon on his own two feet, and in return, Zuko pretended that he wasn't the Fire Lord anyway.

Toph's scowl changed character as Zuko entered, and she called out, "You know, sometime I'm going to meet you and you're _not_ going to be stamping down on some kind of fear that your entire world is going to blow up, and then I'm not even going to know who you _are_."

It was possibly not the most diplomatic thing she could have said, but Iroh chose to at least momentarily hold his peace. Zuko's eyes narrowed; he said, "Hello, Uncle," politely enough, but waited until Toph had picked up her cup of tea and then flicked a finger at it.

Iroh never ceased to be amazed and pleased at how much his nephew's _control_ had increased over the past few (very few, it seemed to Iroh) years: he managed to heat Toph's tea just to the very point of uncomfortably hot for the mouth without causing any actual burns.

And then, demonstrating that he could now think ahead rather more than he used to, he was _already jumping away_ , rather gracefully, when Toph's string of curses erupted almost instantly into the clay pai sho tablets flinging themselves through the air directly at where Zuko's head had been.

The pai sho tablets being the only things which Toph could hit him with that did not cause particular damage to the Jade Dragon, of course.

"Children," Iroh said. It wasn't entirely necessary: both sides of the teasing were friendly, at least for a certain sort of friendship, but it made it a bit easier for them both to roll their eyes and for Zuko to sit down and nod acceptance to the offer of tea.

"You probably already know why I'm here," his nephew said to Iroh. Technically, Iroh hadn't known until this very moment, and those very words, but only because one should always regard palace-born gossip with a certain amount of scepticism until it was confirmed by sources who didn't turn to it as a remedy for the boredom of repetitive tasks.

" . . . .I don't," interrupted Toph, who viewed paying attention to that kind of gossip as a painful chore best avoided when possible. "What happened?"

"The word from the palace is that the Fire Lady is expecting," Iroh supplied, when Zuko just put his head in his hands. It was a little overdramatic, but it was mostly nice to see him still in possession of his full range of feeling.

Ruling could eat that out of a man.

Iroh poured Zuko his tea, and then had to try incredibly hard not to laugh when Toph said, " . . . I take it back. She's definitely going to be the scariest pregnant lady on the planet."

Zuko rolled his eyes and shoved the side of Toph's head; she ducked and punched his shoulder, rather harder than usual. Piandao would have pointed out how they were both so painfully young, still.

Iroh did not personally consider it painful.

"I'm going to be a father," Zuko said, with all the dread he shared with probably every other man (with a brain in his head) who'd said it since the dawn of time.

"It was going to happen sometime, nephew," Iroh pointed out, refilling his own cup and sitting back in his chair. "In fact, all things considered, I'm a little surprised it's taken this long."

Zuko blushed slightly, but didn't get off the track of the thing eating at his mind. "Uncle, I have _no idea_ how to be a good father."

He might have said more immediately; Toph interrupted with, "You had no idea how to rule a country either. You could probably fake this just as well."

Iroh hid his smile behind his teacup. Zuko glared at the (only slightly) shorter young woman and snapped, "Would you stop helping?"

"Probably not," she replied, easily, leaning back so she could put her feet on the pai sho table. "Seriously, boy-king."

Iroh shook his head. "Nobody knows how to be a parent before they start," he said, interrupting gently. It was actually a good point, and the idea planted - the line between being a good ruler (for which his nephew had, Iroh had no particular qualms about feeling, shown a particular talent, especially considering the circumstances) and being a good father, and how both involved more than a little bit of faking it. But working Zuko all the way up wouldn't help; Iroh suspected that Toph didn't quite realize just how scared his nephew was.

He added, as Zuko's face took on the restrained scowl that still arose from the dispensing of common-place wisdom, "I certainly didn't. Not with Lu Ten, and not with you." He shrugged, expansively, to gesture with his tea-cup. "How could anyone know? Each child is different, and needs different things - has different fears, different challenges. You could raise a hundred, and still when another one came along you would realize you had no idea how to be _this_ child's parent."

Behind his teacup, Zuko still looked dubious - but the wall had softened, a little.

"Besides," Iroh went on. "Your mother will help you, and Katara, and Mai - and the family you've inherited at the Poles, for that matter. And you'll help them figure out how to be a grandmother, and a mother, and a - " he stumbled slightly over how to describe what Katara might be to Mai's children, and saw it get the faint ghost of a smile out of his nephew. "Family is complicated," he concluded, instead. And then said, as an acknowledgement to the fear that brought Zuko here in the first place, "And if nothing else, you have had an excellent set of terrible warnings to tell you how not to do it."

The smile-ghost turned wry, but didn't disappear, which more than counted as a victory. "That's for sure."

Then he glanced at Toph, and said, " . . . what are you grinning about?" And she was grinning, Iroh saw, as he turned his attention to her.

"This is awesome," she said, grin going wider. "I'll have _kids_ to corrupt."


End file.
